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Since its onset, COVID-19 has been the focal point of recent healthcare innovation and advancement. Though the past couple of years have been filled with innumerable advancements of health technologies, much opportunity for reevaluating, reimagining, and reinventing the future of healthcare remains. The next two years will set the scope for what is to come.

Technology will be the driver behind innovation that refocuses healthcare on patient experiences and ... [+] navigation.

As our world successfully transitions from a pandemic to endemic stage, the landscape of healthcare innovation is wide-open for disruption, as health, wellness, and healthcare are taken more fundamentally into the digital age. Advancing technology will be the vigorous driver behind a much needed refocusing of healthcare delivery to put the patient experience and navigation of health services back where it belongs front and center.

What we can expectat least in the near-term futureis more digital transformation, more cloud, more integration, more automation, and overall a more coherent, consistent, and comprehensive delivery of healthcare.

Though the endless number of possibilities are inspiring, here are six areas where I foresee the most disruption occurring:

1. Integrating Health Technology and Big Technology: In the past, the merger between these two entities has been subject to many false starts. Big tech companies have been running at health technologies as quickly as they can, but last year we saw this trend finally take hold. Oracle ORCL acquired the nations second largest electronic health record vender; Microsoft MSFT unveiled plans to integrate Teladoc Healths TDOC clinical platform within its own Teams program; and Amazon AMZN integrated a wellness platform (Amazon Care) that offers employees healthcare services 24/7, 365 days a year. Google GOOG has revealed a new tool for clinicians that compiles health records across a wide range of electronic health record systems. This integration will prompt countless innovationsall unified by their power to simplify the patient experience.

2. Refocusing on Consumer Wellness Products: Consumer retail wellness products have taken off. A recent report claimed consumer spending has increased across wellness retail products, stating, US consumer spending on wellness categories including fitness, nutrition, appearance, sleep, and mindfulness, is increasing, as about 40% of US consumers consider these categories to be a high priority. The pandemic certainly helped to grow this space, especially for health technology companies that targeted individual wellness such as Peloton, Oura, and Headspace. This disruption appears to be here to stay, at least for the near future.

3. Doubling Down on Click and Mortar Hybrid Models: The pandemic made virtual health a necessity, and, as patients gained experience with this delivery model, virtual care has become a preferred method for many. In February the Department of Health and Human Services contributed $55 million to increase adoption and utilization of virtual health and reimagining how traditionally underserved populations access care. Virtual and In-Person hybrid modelsdubbed click and mortar modelscombine the benefits of virtual with in-person care, depending on the level of specific need at any given time. This allows for healthcare to be delivered when and where it is needed, reducing patient burden both from a convenience and cost perspective. Ultimately, this reimagining of healthcare delivery results in more accessible, personalized medicine and a better patient journey.

4. Revolutionizing Home Care: Inspired by the success of virtual care, the ability to offer patients treatment from the comfort of their own homes is revolutionizing quality of care and accessibility. This is especially true for Medicare fee-for services and Medicare Advantage beneficiaries, who, during the pandemic, were able to transfer many of their needed services out of healthcare facilities and into the home. It is a trend that is only growing, and, in the next three years, it is estimated this demographic will transfer nearly $265 billion worth of healthcare services to home settings. This reinvention of services is centered on quality and comfort, minimizing transportation and other access barriers, and outsourcing many clinical services from hospital buildings.

5. Accelerating Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Automation: Like the merging of health tech with big tech, AI in healthcare historically has been overhyped. But, its time, too, has come. AI and automation allow for health systems and practitioners to remove the tasks that humans do not have to do, such as patient monitoring, scribing, and many administrative duties. I foresee this having the most impact on administrative costs, which are at least 15% of our total healthcare expenditure in the U.S. (and this rate is growing 2.5 times faster than for comparable countries). Moreover, over half of our administrative costs are considered as waste. AI is already making a difference in reducing labor intensive tasks that contribute to burnout and in speeding up imaging processing to deliver faster care. There is a real opportunity here to make our healthcare system more efficient and affordable, and the tandem of AI and automation will fuel this disruption.

6. Building More Sustainable Healthcare Systems: Climate change is being heavily contributed to by the very entity we turn to when suffering climate-related illnesshealthcare systems. Our healthcare sector in the U.S. has been one of climate changes greatest accelerators: it is responsible for nearly 7,000 tons of waste a day, and for 10% of our countrys carbon emissions and 9% of air pollutants. Collectively, our healthcare sector is the 13th largest producer of carbon dioxide in the world. Innovation of the healthcare industry will result in a reevaluation, reimagining, and reinvention of sustainable efforts to protect patient health beyond the examination room. Kaiser Permanente is a leader in this field right now, having been carbon neutral since 2020 and aiming to be carbon net positive by 2025. They estimate their efforts are equivalent to taking 175,000 cars off our roads a year. We will see more and more players pledging carbon neutrality over the next few years.

The future of healthcare is undoubtedly more patient-focused, more virtual, more automated, and more environmentally minded. Disruption will see a necessary doubling down on investment in technologies and organizations dedicated to reimagining a more affordable, more convenient, more sustainable, and more comprehensive patient journey. At the end of the day, this is what healthcare is all about: making sure that we are providing the patients we serve with the best care possible.

Health reimaginings and reinventions are ripe with opportunities that will better quality of care and outcomes for all patients, allowing each and every one of us to live better, more fulfilling lives. The six areas above are worth paying attention to, setting the landscape as we all work in our own ways to improve health and wellbeing.

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Reevaluating, Reimagining, And Reinventing Healthcare: Innovation In A Post-Pandemic World - Forbes

By Amit Chopra

The field of molecular diagnostics has witnessed a period of rapid development and growth in the last decade. The introduction of new technologies and the implementation of highly accurate tests into clinical testing protocols have been pivotal in advancing the field of precision medicine.

The pandemic has dramatically accelerated this growth, and this momentum is likely to continue into the post-pandemic phase. As per industry sources, the global molecular diagnostics market size was valued at USD 36.2 billion in 2020 and is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 3.9% from 2021 to 2028. Likewise, the Indian molecular diagnostics market stood at an estimated USD 920 million in 2020 and is projected to grow at a CAGR of around 10% till FY 2026.

The rapid spread of Covid has led to an expansion of the Molecular diagnostics testing infrastructure in the country. Furthermore, government initiatives to increase healthcare funding to improve the countrys molecular diagnostics capabilities will also positively impact the market in the coming years. Other influencing factors include higher demand for Point of Care (PoC) diagnostics, a rising elderly population, and a sustained increase in infectious diseases.

Rising Demand for Point of Care (PoC) Diagnostics

Point of care diagnostics solutions has emerged as a significant driver for the advancement of molecular diagnostics during the COVID-19 pandemic. Leading diagnostic companies have adopted advanced technologies like AI to deliver products that could make testing faster and more accurate. A rapid POC test based on gold standard RTPCR technology, Acula has revolutionized rapid and accurate Covid testing worldwide. The platform will also be used to scale and develop point-of-care tests for other infectious diseases in the future. With the onset of many other smart technologies which leverage IoT, AI and ML, we will likely see more innovative products for chronic and lifestyle conditions, including oncology.

New growth drivers including Government Initiatives

Before the pandemic, Real-Time PCR (RT PCR) was considered a very niche technology that only a handful of labs around the country could use. COVID-19 challenged our diagnostics industry to rapidly build their capabilities to a point where we have over 3000+ testing laboratories in India alone that perform molecular testing. With RT PCR, viral amplification, and genome sequencing becoming mainstream, the field of molecular diagnosis is set to be revolutionized. In addition, government funds and grants for developing novel products are also fueling the adoption of advanced technologies for infectious diseases diagnosis. In support of the Make in India initiative, Thermo Fisher Scientific introduced a manufacturing facility in Bengaluru, which produces CoviPath RT-PCR testing kits and MagMAX Dx Prefilled Viral/Pathogen Nucleic Acid Isolation kits that deliver faster, more precise, and easy-to-use Covid testing solutions.

Market expansion in new areas of science and research

Thermo Fisher Scientific mobilized its range of resources by making strategic investments fueling exciting opportunities in cell and gene therapy, companion diagnostics, liquid biopsy, direct-to-consumer, and more through product introductions, partnerships, and facility expansions.

Advancements in the field of Precision Medicine

The global understanding and practice of medicine are currently undergoing a revolutionary change. The shift to precision medicine means moving healthcare from a one-size-fits-all approach to a more targeted approach, where decisions are informed by each individuals unique clinical, molecular, and lifestyle information. Globally, we are closely working with the precision medicine community and helping advance this revolution in diagnosis and treatment by leveraging our global infrastructure and expertise to provide industry-leading capabilities, from population profiling to targeted therapeutics.

Wider adoption of precision medicine will usher in a new era for healthcare and diagnostics where patients receive the care they need, especially for life-threatening conditions.

A step in this direction is precision oncology using next-generation sequencing (NGS) technology that accelerates targeted therapy treatment selection and improves patient outcomes. NGS is involved throughout the development continuum for targeted treatments from translational research to companion diagnostics testing and has enabled personalized oncology to improve patient outcomes.

Molecular Diagnostics: Paving a new path for treatments

Molecular diagnostics is one of the most dynamic and transformative areas leading to advances in prognosis, research, and treatment. The pandemic has further highlighted the importance of this sector. With the support of academia, government, industry, and private companies, the field of molecular diagnostics is now set to enter a new phase that will unveil new-generation technology for modern-day practice and improved outcomes for patients.

(The author is Managing Director, India and South Asia, Thermo Fisher Scientific. The article is for informational purposes only. Please consult medical experts and health professionals before starting any therapy, medication and/or remedy. Views expressed are personal and do not reflect the official position or policy of the FinancialExpress.com.)

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Increased demand for Molecular diagnostics after the COVID-19 outbreak - The Financial Express

Scientists have studied the full genetic information of more than 18,000 cancer samples. They found new information about the patterns of mutations, or changes, that could help doctors provide better treatment.

Their study, which appeared recently in the publication Science, is not the first to do such a complete genetic study of cancer samples. But no one has ever used such a large sample size.

Serena Nik-Zainal of the University of Cambridge was part of the team that did the research. She said this was the largest cohort in the world. It is extraordinary."

Over 12,000 samples in the study came from patients recruited by Britains National Health Service. They were part of a project to study whole genomes from people with common cancers and rare diseases. The rest of the data came from existing cancer data sets.

Researchers were able to study such a large number because of the same improvements in technology that recently permitted scientists to complete the map of the entire human genome.

Andrew Futreal, a genomic expert at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, was not involved in the study. He said the study gives scientists some knowledge of the destructive forces that cause cancer.

Cancer is a disease of the genome or full set of instructions for running cells. It happens when changes in a persons DNA cause cells to grow and divide uncontrollably. DNA is a substance that carries the genetic information in the cells of living things, like a human. In 2020, there were about 19 million new cancer cases worldwide.

For the study, researchers looked at 19 different kinds of cancer in the human body. It identified 58 new mutational signatures, or pieces of evidence leading to the causes of cancer. Nik-Zainal said researchers also confirmed 51 of more than 70 previously reported mutation patterns. Some arise because of problems within a persons cells; others are caused by ultraviolet radiation, tobacco smoke, or chemicals.

Knowing more of them helps us to understand each persons cancer more precisely, which can help guide treatment, Nik-Zainal said.

Genetic sequencing, the process used to study the makeup of a cell, is already being included in cancer care. It is part of the growing move toward personalized medicine, or care based on a patients genes and specific disease. Now doctors will have much more information to draw from when they look at individual cancers.

To help doctors use this information, researchers developed a computer program that will let them find common mutation patterns and seek out rare ones. Nik-Zainal said doctors could suggest a treatment based on a special pattern.

Futreal said the data can also show doctors what tends to happen over time when a patient develops a cancer with a certain mutation pattern. This will help doctors give earlier treatment and hopefully stop the developing disease.

Im John Russell.

Laura Ungar reported on this story for the Associated Press. John Russell adapted it for VOA Learning English.

____________________________________________________________________

sample n. a group of people or things that are taken from a larger group and studied, tested, or questioned to get information

pattern n. the regular and repeated way in which something happens

mutation n. a change in hereditary material

cohort n. a group of individuals having something (usually a statistical factor) in common in a study

genome n. the complete set of genes in a cell or organism

DNA n. a substance that carries genetic information in the cells of plants and animals

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Study of Cancer Genetics to Help with Targeted Treatment - VOA Learning English

One of the next big shifts in patient care will be precision medicine will be"an emerging approach for disease treatment and prevention that takes into account individual variability in genes, environment and lifestyle for each person," as the Precision Medicine Initiative describes it.

For physicians and researchersthis means predicting more accurately which treatment and prevention strategies for a particular disease will work in particular groups of people.

This is completely different from the traditional one-size-fits-all approach, in which treatment and prevention strategies are developed for the average person, with less consideration for the differences between individuals.

What does this mean for healthcare and health IT? A lot of new challenges. Because precision medicine and genomics generate massive volumes of varied and granular data, new approaches to data storage and exchangeand new designs for electronic health records,for example, may be required. Physician education and patient communication are two other areas that will demand attention

Some advanced healthcare provider organizations, such as large academic medical centers,are already well-advanced in their precision medicine efforts. But most providers are still early in the journey, if they're attempting it at all. But many are preparing today for what many think will be the next step in the evolution of healthcare.

This story, focused on precision medicine and other emerging technologies, is the sixth and final installment in Healthcare IT News' feature series, "Health IT Investment: The Next Five Years."

The series offers interviews with primarily CIOs to learn from them the path forward through the priorities they set with their investments in six categories: AI and machine learning; interoperability; telehealth, connected health and remote patient monitoring; cybersecurity; electronic health records and population health; and precision medicine and other emerging technologies. Click here to access all the features.

The six health IT leaders discussing their plans for the next five years in this sixth and final installment in the series include:

Precision medicine has been an organizational priority for UPMC for more than a decade, and it has an ambitious vision of using it to provide better, more personalized care and improved outcomes for patients.

"Through these efforts, we aim to create new insights into the drivers of health and disease to allow the discovery of innovative therapies and models of care, while also lowering the cost of care by avoiding diagnostic delays and therapeutic dead ends," said Kleinz of UPMC.

"As one of the largest integrated healthcare delivery and insurance organizations, UPMC has the scale, capabilities and ambition to lead the discovery, assessment and clinical deployment of impactful precision medicine approaches," he continued.

Dr. Matthias J. Kleinz, UPMC Enterprises

"Our efforts are led by the Institute for Precision Medicine, which was established in 2014 in collaboration with our academic research partner, the University of Pittsburgh."

The mission for the institute is to accelerate translational and clinical research in precision medicine and to deliver the most advanced prediction and treatment of disease, tailored to an individual's unique circumstances, history and condition.

"In this context, we have and will continue to make significant investments in established molecular and genomic tests [and]emerging proteomic, metabolomic, and microbiome assay technology, and drive the discovery of highly personalized precision therapeutic approaches, including cell, gene and regenerative medicines," Kleinz explained.

Investment in deployment and development of novel technologies is an important pillar inunlocking the value of precision medicine.

UPMC has made a number of significant initial investments in the following areas, Kleinz noted, and is continuing to evaluate new opportunities:

"UPMC's leadership strongly supports this vision and already has invested heavily in the implementation of precision medicine," he said. "The appropriate use of precision medicine approaches benefits first and foremost our patients, but also supports our providers as they deliver care across the UPMC system.

"The tangible benefits are streamlined clinical workflows, improved patient outcomes, and the potential to optimize resource allocation and reduce the long-term cost of care," he continued.

"We are dedicated to continuing the aggressive rollout of precision medicine, both through internal efforts and increasingly through creative partnerships with industry, such as our partnership with proteomics company Somalogic."

Sanford Health believes precision medicine will be the future of healthcare, so it continues to make significant investments in this space.

"Leveraging machine learning and high computational power to analyze data sets containing genetic, clinical and socioeconomic data will not only help design the best personalized treatment for our patients, but also will help identify those patients or patient populations that would benefit most from early screening and interventions to prevent disease," said Hocks of Sanford Health.

Matt Hocks, Sanford Health

"Precision medicine will allow us to concentrate our efforts on prevention and early screening, diagnosis, and care that will help keep our patients healthy and thriving for generations to come," he added. "Cancer care and chronic disease management are burdensome to patients, communities and health systems. Concentrating resources to prevent these conditions will benefit us all."

Mobile health is an area of health IT that has been emerging in recent years. The same with remote patient monitoring, which has especially gained ground during the COVID-19 pandemic. Virginia Hospital Center is on top of both.

"Virginia Hospital Center does not view itself as cutting-edge when it comes to technology," Mistretta said. "It considers itself more of a fast, early adopter of new technology it believes may provide an advantage to its patients.

"We are extremely patient-focused, so many of our investments moving forward are going to be in that realm," he continued. "We will be investing in hospital-at-home and remote patient monitoring features in depth, along with other patient engagement functions to empower our population and maintain low-touch care to minimize costs."

Mike Mistretta, Virginia Hospital Center

Mobility is in demand by patients, so connecting through web and app technologies will be a high priority, he added.

"We need to make care convenient for patients and provide care on their terms," he observed. "In our Northern Virginia/D.C. market, we hear about this frequently due to traffic and distance considerations."

Thus the development of pilot programs like the organization's OB Connect, where patients followed for maternity care are issued home equipment, post resultsand are able to skip the office if everything is within expected limits. Mistretta believes this kind of technology will permeate the market.

"These types of technologies will be required to sustain significant growth for health systems," he said. "Combined with the effective use of data to produce appropriate metrics, we should be able to pinpoint more specific markets and what treatments produce more effective outcomes.

"It also is the only way we will be able to meet the significant demands that will be placed on the care system with the shortage of nursing and primary care resources predicted to hit in the coming years," he added. "We simply will not be able to continue to experience the same results and levels of treatment enjoyed today as the population grows and ages without providing increased care outside the walls of our traditional organizational structures."

Leadership buy-in on a different approach will take some time, but with successes along the way (and supporting data to reinforce), healthcare organizations will be able to achieve what will be needed, he said.

Providence pledged to invest $50 million over five years in health equity. Here is a recap of how it invested in year one.

Elsewhere, Moore is concerned with the internet of things.

"The internet of things is it it's smart devices," he said. "We may give our patients smart devices that sit in our care delivery environments, and have the telemetry information, and go into our big data model. Because that's how we're really going to make these machine learning and artificial intelligence models shine.

B.J. Moore, Providence

"We in healthcare say big data, but until you're working with streams of data, it's not really big data, it's just large data warehouses," he continued. "So getting that remote care delivery data is important, like a temperature four times a day, or real-time streaming of oxygen or heart data."

Moore believes the IoT and the streams of data it can provide are things healthcare executives should be talking about more. "It's all about data volumes: The bigger the volume, the better," he said.

Regenstrief is in the process of developing tools and processes to identify bias in algorithms to improve health equity, said Grannis of Regenstrief Institute.

"As AI becomes more ubiquitous, researchers, clinicians, health systems, industry, government and others must be wary of unintended consequences," he stated. "Our research scientists are working on best practices as well as novel analytical tools to regularly monitor for bias in algorithms, a process Regenstrief and CEO Dr. Peter Emb have coined "algorithmovigilance."

"Over the next five years, Regenstrief will be working with individuals and organizations around the world to implement," he added.

Dr. Shaun Grannis, Regenstrief Institute

Regenstrief also is investing in the broader ecosystem required to sustain advanced AI and machine learning methods. In the same way that clinical decision-makers, including physicians and other care providers, undergo regular training updates and certification due to healthcare's evolving nature and potential for bias, advanced algorithms will need frequent updates and certification to minimize bias and or errors, Grannis said.

Frameworks for overseeing algorithms and analytics are nascent.Developing and evaluating approaches to accurately and efficiently monitor AI and machine learning will become increasingly important in the future of healthcare analytics, he added.

"We also are investing in patient ergonomics the application of human factors,engineering and psychology to the design and evaluation of patient-facing technology to enhance delivery of healthcare," he explained.

"Institute scientists are using user-centered design to create apps that help informal caregivers provide care for their loved ones with Alzheimer's and other chronic conditions. Other apps are exploring the benefits of specific diets and brain-stimulating games."

Babachicos of South Shore Health believes tools that assist patients with care navigation will allow for a more improved and directed patient experience.

"These tools combined with the next-generation call centers also known as patient access centers can be accessed 24/7 by patients looking for care options and direct patients to the right place at the right time for their care needs," she explained. "These patient access centers will use multichannel options such as text, voice and chat while allowing patients to perform many self-service functions, as well.

Cara Babachicos, South Shore Health

"These patient access centers might also be staffed by care navigators for a more human connection when necessary," she concluded. "The same centers could potentially deliver virtual visits/consults, as well as potentially manage patient medications and vitals for subscribed patients in the community."

Twitter:@SiwickiHealthITEmail the writer:bsiwicki@himss.orgHealthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.

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CIOs' 5-year plans for precision medicine and emerging technologies - Healthcare IT News

MONTPELLIER, France--(BUSINESS WIRE)--SeqOne Genomics, provider of next genomic analysis solutions for personalized medicine today announced a Series A funding round of 20M.

The round, led by Omnes, Merieux Equity Partners, together with the Software Club and existing investors, Elaia and IRDI Capital Investissement, will enable SeqOne Genomics to accelerate its international sales and the development of new collaborative genomic analysis tools to facilitate communications between different disciplines in the medical team, in order to improve patient outcomes in cancer and hereditary disease.

The company will intensify investments in the development of its genomic-aware data lake to improve the use of big data and machine learning approaches in genomic analysis with the aim of better addressing the fast-evolving needs of molecular biology labs that provide genomic analysis in clinical routine environments, as well as to biopharma companies developing new therapies.

SeqOnes cloud-based solution manages the entire genomic analysis process from raw data to final report presented to clinicians. The solutions end-to-end approach affords better analytic performance, high levels of traceability and improved operational efficiency and has already been adopted by a score of hospitals and central labs and biopharmas as well as spawning partnerships with leading manufacturers of genomics analysis hardware and reagents.

Nicolas Philippe, Ph.D., Co-founder and CEO of SeqOne Genomics stated We are extremely happy to have closed this round with leading investors who bring extensive experience in deep-tech, healthcare and biotherapy and who share our vision of building SeqOne into a global leader in personalized medicine. The funding will give us the resources we need to enhance and commercialize our solution to make genomic analysis more accessible and affordable so that each patient can benefit from personalized medicine recommandations.

The genomics analysis market is experiencing exponential growth driven by the needs of personalized medicine. With the rapid expansion in the available genomic-linked treatments, the complexity of treatment interactions, and the staggering volume of biological and medical data to be factored into each medical decision, biologists and doctors must have access to reliable and actionable analyses in real-time, stated Fabien Collangettes, Director at Omnes. We were particularly impressed by SeqOnes innovative technological approach that enables improved accuracy of genomic test while reducing turnaround time and cost, thus delivering a key competitive advantage in this fast-growing market.

With the closing of this round, SeqOnes board of directors will be: Sacha Loiseau, Ph.D. independent board member and Chairman of the Board, Fabien Collangettes, Director at Omnes, Yoann Bonnamour, Investment Manager at Merieux Equity Partners, Marc Rougier, Partner at Elaia, Nicolas Philippe, co-founder and CEO of SeqOne Genomics and Jean-Marc Holder, Co-founder and Chief Strategy and Innovation officer of SeqOne Genomics.

This new funding round brings the total amount raised by SeqOne Genomics since its founding in 2017 to 23M.

The company currently employs over 40 staff, primarily experts in genomic medicine, data science, bioinformatics, software development and regulatory compliance / quality assurance. It plans to double its staff within the year to execute its ambitious plans.

Advisors:

Legal:Anthony Beauquier - LSF AdvisoryJones Day - Jean-Gabriel Griboul and Hortense FouillandMarket intelligence : Clara Niarfeix Alcimed

Intellectual property: Claire Verschelde, PhD ICOSA

Financial due diligence : Crowe HAF Maxime Hazim and Julien Latrubesse

About SeqOne Genomics

SeqOne Genomics offers high performance genomic analysis solutions for healthcare providers treating patients suffering from cancer, rare and hereditary diseases as well as pharmaceutical companies developing new therapies. The solution leverages advanced machine learning coupled with the company's proprietary GeniOS genomics operating system to dramatically reduce turnaround times and costs while delivering a comprehensive and actionable insights for personalised medicine. The company has won numerous awards including the iLab award and the ARC cancer foundations Hlne Stark prize.Investors include Elaia, IRDI Capital Investissement, Merieux Equity Partners, Omnes and Software Club.

Web: https://seqone.com Direct link to this release: https://seqone.com/seriesa

About Elaia

For more information: http://www.elaia.com @Elaia_Partners

About IRDI Capital Investissement

Learn more: https://www.irdi.fr/

About Merieux Equity Partners

For more precision: http://www.merieux-partners.com

About Omnes

For more precision: http://www.omnescapital.com

About Software Club

For more precision: softwareclub.io

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SeqOne Genomics Closes 20M Series a to Accelerate the Deployment of Its Genomic Medicine Platform - Business Wire

BUFFALO, N.Y. A joint study conducted by researchers at the University at Buffalo and the University of California, Los Angeles is revealing for the first time that behavioral self-management of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), a painful and common gastrointestinal disorder, can fundamentally change the gut microbiome. It is the first to show how cognitive behavioral therapy can teach patients information-processing skills that address the biological roots of their GI symptoms.

This work demonstrates that teaching people how to think more flexibly in specific situations can reduce the physical tension and stress that can disrupt brain-gut interactions and crank up symptoms, said Jeffrey M. Lackner, PsyD, co-senior author on the paper, professor in the Department of Medicine and chief of the Division of Behavioral Medicine in the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at UB.

Published late last year in the journal Microbiome, this study, conceived by an interdisciplinary UB team, shows how a non-drug, non-dietary treatment for IBS induces changes in brain function and in the microbiome by normalizing ways of processing information, Lackner explained.

These results will have a dramatic impact on understanding a gastrointestinal disease that has a significant public health burden, he said. This is paradigm-shifting for how we understand the role of the microbiome and therapeutics that can modify its composition to treat and prevent disease.

Emeran A. Mayer, MD, an internationally known expert on the interactions between the digestive and nervous systems, is co-senior author on the paper. He is a professor in the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and executive director of the G. Oppenheimer Center for Neurobiology of Stress and Resilience.

"Dr. Lackners collaborative project with UCLA is an important breakthrough in the understanding of how cognitive behavioral therapy can alter brain-gut interaction to provide relief for IBS patients, saysAllison Brashear, MD, UBs vice president for health sciences and dean of theJacobs School. This studys translational research provides new hope for those afflicted with this debilitating disease.

The study was funded by grants from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases to Lackner and Mayer, UBs Office of the Vice President for Research and Economic Development and UBs Genome, Environment and Microbiome (GEM) Community of Excellence.

The findings are the first to demonstrate that a specific type of cognitive behavioral therapy developed at UB that teaches information-processing skills can modulate key components of the brain-gut-microbiome axis in some of the most severe IBS patients, said Lackner.

Learning-based treatments

We know that the gut microbiome is a key to regulating brain-gut interactions and plays a role in overall human health from metabolism to immunity. We also know learning-based treatments like cognitive behavioral therapy are some of the most robust treatments of any kind for what is the most prevalent GI (gastrointestinal) disease, even when they are home-based delivered with minimal doctor involvement, said Lackner.

What we didnt know is how those two facts interact, said Lackner. We didnt know whether symptom relief following CBT depends on the microbiome environment to achieve its effects.

This study is important because it reveals a precise microbiome signature that distinguishes patients who respond positively to a drug-free treatment and those who dont, and that signature corresponds with objective changes in brain function, he added.

The fact that we see patient-reported GI symptom improvements that correspond with objective biological changes in the microbiome and brain function is pretty remarkable given that we focused on a low-intensity, home-based behavioral treatment and not medical therapies like probiotics, prebiotics, postbiotics, antibiotics, and fecal microbiota transplantation known to manipulate our microbiome, Lackner said.

Eighty-four IBS patients were recruited from the parent CBT trial the Irritable Bowel Syndrome Outcome Study, a landmark, National Institutes of Health-funded clinical trial led by Lackner that has transformed the way IBS is understood and treated.

The 84 participants underwent neuroimaging and detailed clinical assessment at clinical sites at UB and Northwestern University. UB also collected microbiome data through fecal sampling from 34 of the patients.

Eligible patients were randomized to receive 10 sessions of clinic-based CBT or four sessions of largely home-based CBT with minimal therapist contact over a 10-week acute phase. Both treatments were developed at UB.

Boundary-breaking translational research

This trial was enormously complex in that we collected symptom data across different sites at pre-treatment and post-treatment, said Lackner, who sees patients at the Behavioral Medicine Clinic at UBMD Internal Medicine. Because we were also collecting biological data at multiple times, it required a high level of precision and project management unique among major research centers. It really speaks to our divisions capacity to support boundary-breaking, novel translational research with high impact potential.

UB partnered with the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and the G. Oppenheimer Center for Neurobiology of Stress and Resilience at UCLA.

All that data had to be expertly analyzed and that is where we were able to draw from the expertise of our long-standing collaborators at UCLA, experts in microbiome and imaging research, Lackner says.

UB developed the treatment, delivered it and collected data, while UCLA analyzed gut microbiome and neuroimaging data.

It is a great example of team science between two outstanding research facilities with unique synergies, Lackner says. Theres a lot of reasons why this type of study hasnt been done up to now, but we were able to leverage our unique clinical expertise and our clinical research infrastructure and UCLAs expertise.

Of the 84 participants in the trial, 58 were classified as CBT responders and 26 were classified as non-responders.

While there were small pre-treatment differences between brain network connectivity for responders and non-responders, the significant difference was how much the connectivity changed after treatment.

Responders showed greater baseline connectivity than non-responders between the central autonomic network and the emotional regulation network, according to the study.

Lackner said that the findings raise the possibility that CBT-responsive IBS patients can be identified in clinical practice using microbial biomarkers, before less effective treatments are initiated at great expense to the patient and health care system.

The pattern of data may explain normal versus abnormal gut function and just how the brain-gut can influence symptoms and the relief of them, Lackner says. Larger studies are needed to characterize the functional correlates of gut microbial changes and to identify distinct subtypes of IBS patients for whom brain- and gut-directed therapies are most effective.

This is an example of science moving away from a one-size-fits-all brand of medicine toward a more personalized medicine approach driven by translational research.

Jonathan P. Jacobs, MD, PhD, and Arpana (Annie) Gupta, PhD, both of the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and the G. Oppenheimer Center for Neurobiology of Stress and Resilience at UCLA, are the studys co-first authors.

Co-authors from the Jacobs Schools Division of Behavioral Medicine are:

Rebecca S. Firth, division administrator and research coordinator.

Gregory D. Gudleski, PhD, research assistant professor.

Other co-authors are from the following institutions:

David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

G. Oppenheimer Center for Neurobiology of Stress and Resilience at UCLA.

Imaging Genetics Center, Mark and Mary Stevens Institute for Neuroimaging and Informatics, Keck School of Medicine at University of Southern California.

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Study: In IBS patients, cognitive behavioral therapy modulates the brain-gut microbiome and helps relieve symptoms - UB News Center

[93 Pages Report] Digital Genome Market Insights 2022 This report contains market size and forecasts of Digital Genome in United States, including the following market information:

United States Digital Genome Market Revenue, 2016-2021, 2022-2027, (USD millions)

United States top five Digital Genome companies in 2020 (%)

The global Digital Genome market size is expected to growth from USD 6963.3 million in 2020 to USD 10930 million by 2027; it is expected to grow at a CAGR of 6.2% during 2021-2027.

The United States Digital Genome market was valued at USD million in 2020 and is projected to reach USD million by 2027, at a CAGR of % during the forecast period.

The Research has surveyed the Digital Genome Companies and industry experts on this industry, involving the revenue, demand, product type, recent developments and plans, industry trends, drivers, challenges, obstacles, and potential risks.

Get a Sample PDF of report https://www.360researchreports.com/enquiry/request-sample/19492806

Leading key players of Digital Genome Market are

Digital Genome Market Type Segment Analysis (Market size available for years 2022-2027, Consumption Volume, Average Price, Revenue, Market Share and Trend 2015-2027): Sequencing Services, Sequencing Instruments, Sequencing Consumables, Bioinformatics, Sample Preparation Kits and Reagents

Regions that are expected to dominate the Digital Genome market are North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, South America, Middle East and Africa and others

If you have any question on this report or if you are looking for any specific Segment, Application, Region or any other custom requirements, then Connect with an expert for customization of Report.

Get a Sample PDF of report https://www.360researchreports.com/enquiry/request-sample/19492806

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(New Report) Digital Genome Market In 2022 : The Increasing use in Diagnostics, Agriculture & Animal Research, Personalized Medicine, Drug...

News Release

Monday, January 24, 2022

NIH-funded preclinical study identifies potential therapeutic approach to treat ALS.

Using an experimental drug, researchers were able to suppress a mutated amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) gene. Studies in mice demonstrate that the therapy could show promise in treating rare, aggressive forms of ALS caused by mutations in the fused in sarcoma (FUS) gene. The study, published in Nature Medicine, was funded in part by the National Institute for Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), part of the National Institutes of Health.

The study models how promising gene-targeting therapies can move expeditiously from pre-clinical development to clinical testing, said Amelie Gubitz, Ph.D., program director at NINDS. There is a desperate need for innovative approaches to treating ALS.

ALS, also known as Lou Gehrigs disease, is a fatal neurological disorder that causes the degeneration of motor neurons in the brain and spinal cord. People with ALS rapidly lose muscle strength and eventually their ability to move, swallow, and breathe. Most cases of ALS are sporadic, but at least 10% of cases are familial, or due to mutations in various genes. Mutations in the gene FUS cause severe forms of ALS, referred to as FUS-ALS, including a rare type that begins in adolescence or young adulthood.

In the study, Neil Shneider, M.D., Ph.D., the Claire Tow Associate Professor of Motor Neuron Disorders and Director of the Eleanor and Lou Gehrig ALS Center at Columbia University, New York City, and his team delayed the onset of motor neuron degeneration in mice by using an antisense oligonucleotide drug designed to silence FUS by blocking cells from making specific proteins. Following encouraging results, they administered the drug to a patient with ALS.

Compared to normal mice, mice with a mutated FUS gene had higher levels of insoluble FUS and other ALS-related proteins in their brains and spinal cords. Mice with higher doses of mutant FUS in motor neurons experienced rapid neurodegeneration that began early in life, much like FUS-ALS patients.

The study establishes a mouse model that is highly disease-relevant, said Dr. Shneider. In mice, we found that FUS toxicity was due to a gain of function and was dose-dependent, suggesting that we could treat FUS-ALS by silencing the FUS gene.

In 2019 Dr. Shneider met an individual with ALS in search of therapies that may help her disease. Inspired by her story, Dr. Shneider teamed up with a pharmaceutical company to develop a personalized therapy designed to target the FUS mutation.

In mice, injecting a single dose of the drug into the ventricles, fluid-filled spaces surrounding the brain, delayed the onset of inflammation and motor neuron degeneration by six months. The drug also knocked down levels of FUS by 50% to 80% in the brain and spinal cord. Following drug administration, insoluble forms of other ALS-associated proteins were also cleared.

Under a compassionate use protocol reviewed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Shneider administered the drug to the patient it had been designed for. The patient received repeated infusions of the drug into her spinal canal for 10 months. During the treatment, the patients rate of motor function deterioration slowed. The patient tolerated the treatment well and there were no medically adverse effects.

The study is an example of a precision medicine, bench-to-bedside effort, said Dr. Shneider. We began with the mouse model to establish a rationale for the drug, conducted efficacy studies in the mouse, moved the drug into a human, and collected valuable data that was ultimately used to support a larger Phase 3 clinical trial.

Treatment began more than six months after clinical onset, by which time the disease had already significantly advanced. As is typical with juvenile-onset FUS-ALS, the disease progressed rapidly, and the patient died from complications of the disease.

By studying the patients brain and spinal cord tissue, researchers found that the drug silenced FUS throughout the nervous system and reversed the toxic nature of FUS and other disease-related proteins. Compared to tissue from untreated FUS-ALS patients and healthy controls, FUS protein aggregatesa pathological hallmark of this form of ALSwere sparse, suggesting that they may have been cleared by the drug. Tissue samples were provided by the New York Brain Bank of Columbia University.

The protein made from the FUS gene has been shown to be important for various cellular processes. Prior studies in mice suggest that FUS mutations result in the production of an abnormal protein that forms clumps, or aggregates, leading to motor neuron damage. By targeting the faulty gene in a way that suppresses toxic FUS activity, gene silencing products like the antisense oligonucleotide drug could potentially reduce or prevent disease progression.

The results were used to support a clinical trial testing the drug in patients with FUS-ALS (NCT04768972).

This study was supported by grants from the NIH (NS106236), Nancy Perlman, Tom Klingenstein, and the Judith and Jean Pape Adams Charitable Foundation.

NINDSis the nations leading funder of research on the brain and nervous system.The mission of NINDS is to seek fundamental knowledge about the brain and nervous system and to use that knowledge to reduce the burden of neurological disease.

About the National Institutes of Health (NIH):NIH, the nation's medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit http://www.nih.gov.

NIHTurning Discovery Into Health

Korobeynikov, V.A., et al. Antisense oligonucleotide silencing of FUS expression as a therapeutic approach in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Nature Medicine, January 24, 2022. DOI: 10.1038/s41591-021-01615-z

###

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Silencing a faulty gene may uncover clues to rare forms of ALS - National Institutes of Health

The Soyuz MS-19 crew ship and the Prichal docking module attached to the Nauka multipurpose laboratory module are pictured during an orbital sunset.

The Expedition 66 crew split its research schedule between space botany and life science aboard the International Space Station today.

NASA Flight Engineer Thomas Marshburn started Thursday watering plants growing for the Veggie PONDS study that explores ways to reliably grow vegetables in microgravity. Afterward, the three-time space station visitor verified the operability of the two robotics workstations, located in the U.S. Destiny laboratory module and the cupola, that control the Canadarm2 robotic arm.

Matthias Maurer, flight engineer from ESA (European Space Agency), printed samples from a handheld bioprinter for analysis back on Earth. The samples were printed to investigate how to develop tissues in microgravity to advance personalized medicine on Earth and in space.

The three other NASA Flight Engineers aboard the orbiting lab, Raja Chari, and Kayla Barron, Mark Vande Hei, worked throughout the day on a variety of life support and science maintenance tasks. Chari was on plumbing duty draining and transferring fluids in station tanks. Barron serviced the labs exercise cycle before replacing components in the waste and hygiene compartment, the stations bathroom. Vande Hei processed samples for DNA analysis for the Food Physiology experiment that documents how diet affects a crew members health during a long-term space mission.

The stations commander, Anton Shkaplerov of Roscosmos, was back on exercise research on Thursday exploring how to maximize the effectiveness of working out in weightlessness. Russian Flight Engineer Pyotr Dubrov cleaned up the Zvezda and Poisk modules, returning them to a post-spacewalk configuration following his excursion with Shkaplerov on Jan. 19.

Learn more about station activities by following thespace station blog,@space_stationand@ISS_Researchon Twitter, as well as theISS FacebookandISS Instagramaccounts.

Get weekly video highlights at:http://jscfeatures.jsc.nasa.gov/videoupdate/

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Plants, Bioprinting and Orbital Plumbing Fill Crew's Thursday Schedule - NASA

Tackling Seasonal Affective Disorder

MIAMI (PRWEB) January 28, 2022

ClarityX, providers of genetic testing to empower both consumers and physicians, today announced that its at-home genetic tests can aid in finding the appropriate medications for patients combating Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). Their testing is able to reveal an individuals genetic profile in order to take the guesswork out of prescribing.

Recent clinical research has shown that depression spikes at the beginning of the new year, with over 10 million Americans struggling with seasonal depression. Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) is a type of depression that relates to changes in the seasons. Although the exact cause of SAD is unknown, treatments include light therapy, talk therapy, Vitamin D and antidepressant medications. Unfortunately, the sheer amount of these drugs available on the market make it difficult for healthcare providers to determine which medication will be the most effective for each patient. Additionally, incorrect dosing may interact negatively within a patient.

ClarityX offers genetic test kits that are able to reliably predict a persons response to medication. Pharmacogenetic testing is a type of DNA testing that examines genes for variations that may affect how patients metabolize certain drugs. The insight helps when having to choose between different antidepressants as well as providing physicians information to help with optimal dosing.

Additionally, ClarityX's Mindwell Test is designed to provide answers on how a patient responds to various antidepressants, antipsychotics, anxiolytics, SSNRIs and SSRIs based on their DNA. As genes do not change over time, an individuals Mindwell test results and treatment plan will remain valid and accurate for life. The Mindwell Test covers genetic testing for depression, anxiety, bipolar, ADHD/ADD, OCD, PTSD medications.

Whether someone is experiencing mild SAD or is facing debilitating depression, its important to confront the symptoms. When left untreated, the condition can worsen and infiltrate every aspect of life causing patients to lose interest in their favorite activities, stop maintaining social relationships and neglect their daily obligations, said Andres Benzaquen, President of ClarityX. However, getting the right depression medication is a process of trial and error that can take months. ClarityX helps cut the guesswork out of the process - especially as more and more patients are searching for personalized, precise medication healthcare. In the near future, you won't be prescribed medications without a pharmacogenetic test.

Testing happens in a quick three step process. First, the patient clicks the "Get Started" button torequest a ClarityX test. Once a patient has received and activated their kit, they perform a simple cheek swab. The sample is then returned in the provided pre-paid envelope. Patients receive their personalized report online in their ClarityX patient portal and the results can easily be shared with their doctors.

The days of going back and forth to your physician just to find the right medications are over. "Were at the beginning of a growing shift towards the at-home medically actionable, test market., adds Benzaquen. . In a time when mental Health is a growing problem - and has been exacerbated during Covid - precision medicine is the future of healthcare. Our genetic tests can help to take the guesswork out of your medications,

Whether patients are looking for a new medication or have been recently diagnosed with SAD, pharmacogenetics can help find the optimal treatment to empower people to take control of their health, happiness and overall well-being.

For more information, please visit http://www.clarityxdna.com, Email: abenz@clarityxdna.comor call 800-921-8957 for more information.

ClarityX believes in taking the guesswork out of your healthcare. We Believe that one size does not fit all, when it comes to your medication or treatments. Individualized personal medicine is the future of healthcare.

ClarityX direct to consumer genetic testing empowers both patients and physicians. We deliver on that promise everyday by helping patients with convenient, easily accessible in-home testing options.

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ClarityX DNA: The Key to Tackling Seasonal Affective Disorder - PR Web

DUBLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The "High Performance Computing Market by Component, Infrastructure, Services, Price Band, HPC Applications, Deployment Types, Industry Verticals, and Regions 2022 - 2027" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The High Performance Computing market includes computation solutions provided either by supercomputers or via parallel processing techniques such as leveraging clusters of computers to aggregate computing power.

HPC is well-suited for applications that require high performance data computation and analysis such as high frequency trading, autonomous vehicles, genomics-based personalized medicine, computer-aided design, deep learning, and more. Specific examples include computational fluid dynamics, simulation, modeling, and seismic tomography.

This report evaluates the HPC market including companies, solutions, use cases, and applications. Analysis includes HPC by organizational size, software and system type, server type, price band, and industry verticals.

The report also assesses the market for integration of various artificial intelligence technologies in HPC. It also evaluates the exascale-level HPC market including analysis by component, hardware type, service type, and industry vertical.

Select Report Findings:

High Performance Computing (HPC) may be provided via a supercomputer or via parallel processing techniques such as leveraging clusters of computers to aggregate computing power. HPC is well-suited for applications that require high performance data computation such as certain financial services, simulations, and various R&D initiatives.

The market is currently dominated on the demand side by large corporations, universities, and government institutions by way of capabilities that are often used to solve very specific problems for large institutions. Examples include financial services organizations, government R&D facilities, universities research, etc.

However, the cloud-computing based "as a Service" model allows HPC market offerings to be extended via HPC-as-a-Service (HPCaaS) to a much wider range of industry verticals and companies, thereby providing computational services to solve a much broader array of problems. Industry use cases are increasingly emerging that benefit from HPC-level computing, many of which benefit from split processing between localized devices/platforms and HPCaaS.

In fact, HPCaaS is poised to become much more commonly available, partially due to new on-demand supercomputer service offerings, and in part as a result of emerging AI-based tools for engineers. Accordingly, up to 54% of revenue will be directly attributable to the cloud-based business model via HPCaaS, which makes High-Performance Computing solutions available to a much wider range of industry verticals and companies, thereby providing computational services to solve a much broader array of problems.

One of the challenge areas identified is low utilization but (ironically) also high wait times for most supercomputers. Scheduling can be a challenge in terms of workload time estimation. About 23% of jobs are computationally heavy and 37% of jobs cannot be defined very well in terms of how long jobs will take (within a 3-minute window at best). In many instances, users request substantive resources and don't actually use computing time.

Key Topics Covered:

High Performance Computing Market Dynamics

High Performance Computing Market Analysis and Forecasts

High Performance Computing Company Analysis

High Performance Computing Market Use Cases

Conclusions and Recommendations

Companies Mentioned

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/fim7bo

About ResearchAndMarkets.com

ResearchAndMarkets.com is the world's leading source for international market research reports and market data. We provide you with the latest data on international and regional markets, key industries, the top companies, new products and the latest trends.

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Global High Performance Computing Market 2022-2027: AI, IoT, and 5G will be Major Drivers for HPC Growth as they Facilitate the Need to Process Vast...

Since 2015, groups of medical students at the Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago have been working diligently to answer a single question: How can we improve healthcare at the system level?

Medical students have and always will be expected to provide personalized, high-quality care to their patients. But amid all the studying, rotations, research and clinical volunteering, there is another area of professional growth and healthcare activism emerging that allows students to promote broader change across the healthcare system: community health consulting.

A group of students at Feinberg, now more than 50 in any given year, have been providing pro-bono strategy consulting services to community clinics and healthcare not-for-profits for more than six years as members of Second Opinions, a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit student organization founded by a trio of management consultants-turned-physicians. Second Opinions aims to promote system-level change in healthcare by pairing medical students with local healthcare organizations to support a variety of administrative and strategic initiatives.

Groups of four to five Second Opinions members work together on discrete projects for four months at a time, tackling problems in areas ranging from clinical workflow analysis to healthcare and not-for-profit economics. Current projects include helping one local community clinic improve its mammogram referral network and assisting a second clinic in the creation of an equitable sliding scale payment system for uninsured patients. While our projects are based on set timelines, we establish follow-up procedures in which we continue working with clients on emerging issues. This continuity-of-care approach is crucial across all levels of healthcare and is what drew many of us to medicine in the first place.

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Second Opinions shines brightest in its work to improve outcomes for underserved populations. Amid rising costs and legislative volatility in healthcare, Free and Charitable Clinics (FCCs) as well as Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) have led the way in providing accessible care to underinsured or uninsured Americans. To help them overcome their greatest obstacles, quantifying community impact and obtaining funding, our group recently created a reimbursement valuation tool to determine the monetary and quality-adjusted life years (QALY) values of services provided by free clinics as well as the value of appropriately averted emergency department visits.

The impact of our valuation tool started locally but soon gained national traction. First, we presented to the Illinois Association of Free and Charitable Clinics, a cluster of just over 40 FCCs. Soon, our team was presenting to board members of the National Association of Free and Charitable Clinics, an organization of over 1,400 FCCs. This information has important implications for how healthcare resources get distributed, and our work quantifying averted downstream costs and disease strengthened the case for investing in these providers.

System-level change does not have to occur on a national scale. The work can start by aiding a local women's health clinic in the transition from paper records to an efficient electronic health record system so that more underrepresented Chicagoans can be seen each day. It can be performing community health needs assessments for neighboring clinics that operate in Chicago's West and South Sides, or even helping our own institution expand the reach of its pediatrics mobile health program.

Through experiences like this, our medical student members learn how to effect change on system-level healthcare issues and leave empowered to help both individual patients and the systemequipped to care for the forest and the trees. The problems we face are complex and open-ended, and our members are challenged to find ways to measure system performance and enact change through policy, workflow improvements, and clinical protocols that benefit entire patient populations, particularly underserved ones. This is a tall order, but as medical students, our advantage is that we are always intimately observing from the inside with a fresh perspective and a passion for creative innovation.

Our members grew up in an era marked by healthcare disparities and inefficiencies. The dysfunction of our American healthcare system is broadcast to us throughout medical school. We are ready to innovate, and we believe physicians should always have a seat at the table when it comes to improving the healthcare system and operating the business of healthcare. Our members are eager to provide actionable recommendations and create solutions to problems that burden the same underrepresented patients we hope to care for in clinics and hospitals throughout our careers. We also realize we have much to learn. Our members remain humble, ready to begin each project by listening for as long as it takes to adequately understand the scope of the issue at hand. Most of all, our members are creativeunafraid to invent solutions where there is no precedent to guide them.

We encourage medical trainees across the country to join in our efforts to promote community health through strategy work. There is space for anyone who is dedicated to community health to help, and we are excited to support others with this important work. System-level change is difficult but powerful, so help where you are needed and get creative. And if you need a Second Opinions consult, you know who to page.

Drs. Cecil Qiu, Liz Nguyen and Benjamin Peipert contributed to this article. All graduated from Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Qiu is a resident at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Nguyen is a resident at Stanford University School of Medicine, and Peipert is a resident at Duke University School of Medicine.

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A different kind of consult: pro-bono community health consulting by med students - Modern Healthcare

Personalized medicine is a fantastic opportunity to take a "one size fits all" approach to diagnostics and drug therapy and prevention and turn it into an individualized approach. We all are similar, of course, but we are also different. And the idea that medicine would be applied in a fashion that ignores those differences can't be any more correct than going to the shoe store and buying any old pair of shoes without checking the size. Genomics is playing a big role in the emergence of personalized medicine, 'cause it gives us a window in a very specific molecular way into those differences between us and allows the opportunity for making individual predictions about disease risk that can help somebody choose a prevention plan that is right for them. It also allows the possibility in some instances of picking the right drug at the right dose for the right person instead of the "one size fits all" approach to drug therapy. And ultimately it will be hard to see how any kind of medicine will not be affected by this as we learn more and more about the individual, and as many of us find our complete genomes being sequenced and placed into our medical records to empower that kind of personalized approach. Lots of work to do here, but maybe the biggest revolution in medicine in a very long time.

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Personalized Medicine - Genome.gov

What is precision medicine?

Precision medicine is a way health care providers can offer and plan specificcare for their patients, based on the person's genes (or the genes in their cancer cells). It's sometimes called personalized medicine or personalized care. Precision medicine looks at how a specific gene change (gene mutation) might affect a person's risk of getting a certain cancer or, if they already have cancer, how their genes (or genes in their cancer cells) might affect treatment.

The approach uses information from genetic tests to help doctors put together a plan for care that usually involves very specific recommendations. In some cases, precision medicine can help make a more accurate diagnosis and improve treatment. In other cases, it can help people make decisions about healthy habits, earlier screening tests, and other steps towards prevention if they are at risk for a particular cancer.

Your health care providers might not use the exact words "precision medicine" or "personalized medicine." Instead they might talk to you about genetic, genomic, DNA, or molecular testing. Or they might talk about looking for biomarkers or getting a genetic profile. These are ways doctors and other health care providers might use a precision medicine approach when they are planning your care.

Precision medicine is based on knowing the effects of certain gene mutations (changes). When thinking about precision medicine, it can be helpful to understand what gene mutations are and how they can affect a person's risk for cancer or treatment for a cancer.

Each cell in a person's body has DNA, which contains our genes. Genes are the instructions your cells use to make proteins needed to keep your body working normally.

When cells divide to make new cells, the genes inside those cells are copied. A gene change happens when there's a mistake in the copying process. Sometimes these changes come from a parent (inherited gene changes). But they can also happen sometime later in life (acquired gene changes). Some gene changes can be harmful, while others may not cause any problems.

All cancers are caused by a genetic change or mutation of some kind. Cancer cells are mutated versions of normal cells, meaning something changed in a normal cell to make it turn into a cancer cell. Experts agree that it takes more than one gene mutation in a cell for cancer to happen.

While we don't yet know all the genes and mutations that could be involved in the development of cancer, there are some we know about and can test for. Depending on the type of mutation, an abnormal gene change might make a person more likely to develop a certain cancer. Or, if they already have cancer, the abnormal gene might mean that the cancer may not respond well to a certain type of treatment or drug. In some people with cancer, a specific gene mutation might mean that their prognosis (outcome) is better or worse than someone with the same cancer who does not have that gene change.

For example, when a person is diagnosed with cancer, they often get the same treatment as other people with that type of cancer. Sometimes a specific drug is used to treat a cancer with a certain abnormal gene. But gene changes might be different from one person to another, even if they have the same type of cancer. Because of this, each of those people might have a different response to the same drug. For certain cancer types, doctors can test for gene changes that can tell them if a person might respond better to one drug than another.

You can learn more in Genetics and Cancer.

Precision medicine is being used for certain cancers to help know what tests and treatment are best. Doctors might use precision medicine to help them:

Sometimes precision medicine is used for people with certain cancers or who are at higher risk for developing certain cancers. For example, a person might realize cancer runs in their family, or their doctor might notice a pattern of cancer in their family. In these cases, the patient might meet with a certified genetic counselor and consider having genetic testing. The testing can show if they have a gene change or mutation that puts them at a higher risk for certain types of cancer. If so, the doctor might recommend screening and other tests (often at a younger age than usual) to help find cancer early, and prescribe medicines or suggest healthy habits that might help lower cancer risk.

For people with a cancer diagnosis, their tumor might be tested for certain types of gene changes or proteins made from those gene changes.This testing can provide information about how their cancer grows and spreads. These tests might be called biomarker tests, chromosome tests, gene tests, or biochemical tests. It might be done using a blood or saliva sample, biopsy tissue, or body fluids. If the test is done using a biopsy sample (from a tumor), it'sdone in a special lab and might be called by different names, such as DNA mutational analysis, genomic testing, proteomics, biomarker testing, tumor profiling, cytogenetics, next generation sequencing, or molecular testing.

In some cancers, the gene testing done on a tumor can affect treatment choices. This is because certain gene changes can affect how a tumor responds to certain treatments. And some tumors have gene changes that are different from other tumors of the same type. For example, not every melanoma skin cancer will have the exact same gene mutations.This means these tumors might not respond to a treatment the same way. The goal is to give a treatment that can target a gene mutation, without causing too many side effects, and to avoidgivingtreatments that might not work. You can read more about 2 types of treatment often used in precision medicine: targeted therapy and immunotherapy.

You can also learn more in How Genes Can Help in the Diagnosis and Treatment of Cancer.

It's important to understand that precision medicine is not used for every cancer. However, the hope is that one day, treatments will be customized to the specific gene changes in each persons cancer. Much research is being done in this area.

Some of the more common cancers where precision medicine is being used to help with treatment decisions include:

If a treatment is available to target a gene mutation that's common in your type of cancer, you (or your tumor) will likely be tested for it. You might need to ask your doctor some questions to know if testing was done. People with the types of cancer listed above are usually tested for certain gene changes when they are diagnosed, or shortly after. Some cancers are also tested if they get worse or come back.

Access to the latest precision medicine research might be limited. A lot still needs to be learned about how precision medicine can be used in cancer. Researchers are trying to fill those gaps, both in labs and in clinical trials.

Many clinical trials are done with patients who have specific types and stages of cancer. But to be part of a precision medicine clinical trial, a person must have a certain genetic change that can be targeted by amedicine that's being tested. And precision medicine clinical trials are often available only at larger cancer centers. This means sometimes the chances to be part of a clinical trials can be limited.

Even when precision medicine is available outside of a clinical trial, it might not always be used as well as it could be. For example:

It's important to ask questions and know all options that are available to you.

Experts believe precision medicine could help lower health care costs in some ways. This is because precision medicine can help guide doctors in choosing the right tests, which can then help them choose the treatments that will work best and hopefully have the fewestside effects. This means a patient might avoid getting treatments that are not likely to work well, along with unnecessary side effects.

But precision medicine can also increase some costs. For example:

If you don't have cancer, but are concerned about your cancer risk because of a family history or other reason, here are some questions you might want to ask your doctor:

You can learn more in Understanding Genetic Testing for Cancer.

If you have cancer, especially one of the cancers listed above in "Types of cancer precision medicine is used for," here are some questions you might want to ask your doctor:

You can learn more about what questions to ask in Understanding Your Options and Making Treatment Decisions.

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Precision or Personalized Medicine | Precision Medicine ...

SEATTLE, Oct. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Precision medicine sometimes referred to as "holistic medicine" is a highly specialized way to tailor personalized medicine to specific individuals, taking into consideration differences in genetics, histories, and environments. The aim of precision medicine is to only target the appropriate treatments to the appropriate patients at the appropriate time with the best possible outcomes. It is used to make medical interventions more efficient and less harmful to patients. In practice, precision medicine often involves working with and coordinating other health care teams, including primary care providers, specialists, surgeons, clinicians, nurses, and other doctors, all of whom work together to provide the most effective care. Precision medicine includes diagnostic tests, which are used to detect genetic variations that may affect a person's responses to medication or disease. These tests determine whether the patient's genetic or environmental factors are interfering with the effectiveness of the drugs, devices, or procedures being used in the treatment. The accuracy of such tests has improved a lot over the past few years.

The global precision medicine market is estimated to account for114,891.8Mn in terms of value by the end of 2028.

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Market Drivers:

Growing development of Big Data analysis and expansion of the IT sector is propelling growth of the precision medicine. Big data analysis and IT easily analyze, crunch, and store the necessary data which enable the physician to provide precision medicine. Key players are investing heavily in precision medicine. For instance, in August 2019, BioCity, the life science incubator and business announced an investment in precision medicine biotech, Kinomica Ltd., via the Innovate UK Precision Medicine Investment Accelerator.

An increasing number of R&D programs for enhancing precision medicine is fostering growth of the market. For instance, in October 2021, Amgen and Neumora Therapeutics, Inc. a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company pioneering precision medicines for brain diseases, announced a strategic partnership to advance neuroscience discovery, development, and commercialization. The companies have partnered on programs by applying Neumora's proprietary precision neuroscience platform to insights generated by Amgen's deCODE genetics and human data research capabilities.

Market Opportunities

Key players are adopting various strategies to accelerate the development of the precision market across developing regions. This is expected to provide room for potential growth opportunities for the market. For instance, in August 2021, Clinical trial organization (CRO) Precision for Medicine has partnered with Trialbee, a patient selection, and selection firm to address the complexities of clinical development. According to this partnership, they will use Trialbee's analytical features and Precision for Medicine's wide range.

Development of bioinformatics by key players to support the research of precision medicine is projected to offer lucrative growth opportunities. For instance, in June 2021, Indivumed GmbH announced the launch of nRavelTM, a unique AI discovery platform for oncology and precision medicine. The platform combines IndivuType's deep multi-omics data with elaborate disease models, high-powered automated Machine Learning tools, and a comprehensive suite of advanced analytics tools.

Market Trends

Precision medicine has gained lots of popularity in the treatment of cancer due to its positive result. Thus, the increasing prevalence of cancer is expected to uplift the growth of the market. According to the World Health Organization, cancer is a leading cause of death worldwide, accounting for nearly 10 million deaths in 2020. The economic impact of cancer is significant and increasing. The total annual economic cost of cancer in 2010 was estimated at US$ 1.16 trillion.

Growing need for personalized medicine will favor positively impact the growth of precision medicine. According to the American Association for Clinical Chemistry, the most common conditions using personalized medicine today are diabetes (45%), common cancers (38%), and neurological diseases (33%). These numbers are all set to increase significantly in the near future.

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Competitive Landscape:

Major players operating in the precision medicine market are Intomics, Nanostring Technologies, Inc., Ferrer Incode, Tepnel Pharma Services, Pfizer, Inc., Novartis AG, Merck & Co., Inc., Qiagen N.V., Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd., and Quest Diagnostics.

Market segmentation:

Global Precision Medicine Market, By Technology:

Global Precision Medicine Market, By Application:

By Geography:

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Precision Medicine Market to reach US$ 114,891 Mn by end of 2028, Says Coherent Market Insights - PRNewswire

Significant technological advances over the past decade have changed the way we live, work and interact with each other.

Yet, many of these developments either happened behind closed doors in research laboratories and private companies or became so quickly ingrained in our daily lives that they often went unnoticed.

Every year, experts convened by the World Economic Forum and Scientific American make predictions about the emerging technologies expected to have major social, economic, and environmental impacts worldwide.

While some of these technologies have been catapulted into public consciousness and are fully integrated into our lives, others have been slower to gain momentum.

In the run-up to the 10th Anniversary edition of the Top 10 Emerging Technologies Report, launching 16 November, we take a look at some of the technologies from the past nine reports and ask: did the technology change the world, or did it fail to fulfil its potential? How is it impacting lives today, and where is it headed?

Given the poor success rates of treatments for things like cancer and depression, medical professionals have been trying to tailor treatments to individual patients for some time.

A decade on, there is renewed cause for optimism, says Dr. Elizabeth ODay, CEO and Founder of Olaris, Inc: In the next 5 to 10 years, we will be able to get the right drug to the right patient at the right time at the right dose and optimize all of these parameters.

We spend billions of dollars every year on drugs or treatments that dont work. Personalized medicine stands to correct this. Not only are we going to improve [patient] outcomes, but we can cut costs on drugs and treatments that arent going to benefit an individual.

But for personalized medicine to benefit everyone, scientists trying to figure out which treatments work best for which patients will require data from as diverse a group as possible.

We need all ethnicities, all geographies, people from all socioeconomic backgrounds to be involved in this process, or risk increasing health disparities, and thats not the future of medicine that we want to create.

Genomic vaccines vaccines made from DNA or RNA that encode desired proteins have been in development for many years but saw unexpected success in tackling the COVID-19 pandemic.

The technology was on our list of Top 10 emerging technologies in 2017, and three years later, Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna created the worlds first mRNA vaccines to tackle the worlds biggest health threat.

Equitable distribution of vaccines is a global challenge, but in future, access to genomic vaccine technology could be democratized, believes Prof. Robin Shattock, Chair of Mucosal Infection and Immunity at Imperial College London.

I think well see many governments around the world wanting to establish their own manufacturing capacity and because you dont need a large manufacturing facility, it could move to a situation where there are many regional manufacturing centres that have the hardware and what becomes distributed is the software the genetic code for the next pandemic pathogen or the next chronic target.

Im hoping it will revolutionize a lot of what we do. Its not a magic bullet, it wont replace all other types of vaccines, but it will have an important role to play in public health.

In 2019, we identified that droid friends and robot assistants would increasingly become part of everyday life, looking after the elderly and educating children - and the pandemic has accelerated this trend due to the need to maintain a social distance.

But theres still a little way to go. As robotics become more integrated into peoples lives, they will need to be designed to detect, interpret, and respond to human behaviour, according to Henny Admoni, A. Nico Habermann Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon Universitys Robotics Institute.

In our consciousness as a society, weve been thinking about social robots for a very long time, but the reality is that most of the robots that are out in the world right now are much more physical robots that tend to be isolated from humans.

The World Economic Forum was the first to draw the worlds attention to the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the current period of unprecedented change driven by rapid technological advances. Policies, norms and regulations have not been able to keep up with the pace of innovation, creating a growing need to fill this gap.

The Forum established the Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution Network in 2017 to ensure that new and emerging technologies will helpnot harmhumanity in the future. Headquartered in San Francisco, the network launched centres in China, India and Japan in 2018 and is rapidly establishing locally-run Affiliate Centres in many countries around the world.

The global network is working closely with partners from government, business, academia and civil society to co-design and pilot agile frameworks for governing new and emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), autonomous vehicles, blockchain, data policy, digital trade, drones, internet of things (IoT), precision medicine and environmental innovations.

Learn more about the groundbreaking work that the Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution Network is doing to prepare us for the future.

Want to help us shape the Fourth Industrial Revolution? Contact us to find out how you can become a member or partner.

A social robot is not a replacement for social interaction, but becomes a medium through which communities can engage and people can interact.

Its really important as we build robots into our lives that we consider the ethical implications of robotics, who has access to these different technologies and what these technologies are perpetuating in terms of the social norms that are already embedded in society.

Written by

Greta Keenan, Programme Specialist, Science and Society, World Economic Forum

Kate Whiting, Senior Writer, Formative Content

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

Excerpt from:
The biggest emerging technologies of the past 10 years - World Economic Forum

October 20, 2021

By Tiffany Lohwater UC Berkeley

The University of California, Berkeley and the UC San Francisco on Oct. 20 jointly launched a new, one-of-a-kind program in computational precision health, a significant step toward advancing this new field and, ultimately, improving the quality and equity of health care.

The partnership positions the two world-renowned universities at the forefront in creating a new field at the intersection of medicine, statistics and computation. By creating a joint faculty group between UC Berkeley and UCSF, the two universities will simultaneously advance computing and data science with biomedicine and health, enabling solutions that would not have been imagined by either discipline alone.

Learn more about the computational precision health program.

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The research of the joint faculty will enable new and more personalized techniques for the prevention, diagnosis, treatment and management of disease. Working together, the two universities will develop new methods for data-driven clinical care, early detection and intervention, new ways to predict outcomes, and new targeted treatments which are both more effective and have fewer side effects. This ground-breaking faculty and educational program will transcend traditional boundaries among institutions, disciplines and scholarly communities to transform the future of health and health care.

The program will train the next generation of researchers to design, build and test innovations such as machine learning, digital health and clinical decision support systems within real-world clinical and public health settings to ensure that solutions meet real-world needs. Recognizing that algorithms are currently being created that too often exacerbate rather than mitigate racial and other biases, the program will ensure that equity, fairness, accountability and transparency will be hallmarks of all of its educational and research activities.A PhD degree program is anticipated by 2023 that will be jointly conferred by UC Berkeley and UCSF, leveraging the institutions research strengths: computer science and statistics at Berkeley, health care and health sciences at UCSF, and population and public health sciences at both campuses.

A gift of $50 million has been provided to UCSF and Berkeley by an anonymous donor to support the international search and hiring of four new faculty members in the next year and initiate development of the graduate program. The two institutions have committed to collectively secure an additional $100 million in funding from other sources such as philanthropy, federal grants and industry partnerships.

The joint program is being led by co-directors from both campuses who have expertise in medicine, public health and data science: Ida Sim MD, PhD, professor of medicine at UCSF and Maya Petersen MD, PhD, associate professor of biostatistics and epidemiology at Berkeley.

Maya Petersen, MD, PhD. Photo by UC Berkeley

The current evidence-based approach in medicine has led to health interventions and treatments that work on average for selected and often non-representative patients, said Sim, a primary care physician and informatics researcher. Many patients and patient populations face risks to their health from the use of data that are incomplete, data systems and infrastructure that are not well connected, and inherent bias in how data are collected and analyzed.

We can work to address these issues by equipping our students to understand the underlying contexts of equitable health care while simultaneously developing computational solutions to help instead of harm, she said.

Petersen and Sim believe that advanced data analytics and digital infrastructures are needed to allow next-generation computational health solutions to learn from every patient intervention and enable every patient to benefit from the latest data and evidence on successful health interventions. This vision can only be achieved, they say, if the underlying computational and analytic tools are conceived, tested and validated for the health care needs of diverse individuals and communities.

For an example of why this is needed, just look at the COVID-19 response in the U.S. and globally, said Petersen, who developed mathematical models for San Francisco and Bay Area communities that helped predict cases and hospitalizations during the pandemic. Theres so much more we can do to deliver on our promise and improve our healthcare and public health systems. We must serve the needs of populations and communities as well as individuals, and work to address existing systemic inequities in health.

Through this program, we aim to create a pipeline of diverse leaders committed to this goal, including those communities most impacted by existing health inequities. Embedded in all core courses in our curriculum will be a focus on diversity, equity and inclusion asking who are solutions built for, and who are solutions built by human-centered design, and the consideration of the ethical implications and societal impacts of this work, Petersen said.

Shared administration of the program by Berkeleys Division of Computing, Data Science, and Society and UCSFs Bakar Computational Health Sciences Institute, along with the involvement of 39 faculty in multiple schools and departments at both UC campuses, will help facilitate additional education and research collaborations in computational precision health.

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Innovative Joint Program in Computational Precision Health at UC Berkeley and UCSF Aims to Improve Quality and Equity of Health Care - UCSF News...

The long-awaited FDA guidelines for the Over-the-Counter (OTC) Hearing Aid Law were finally released last week. The move by the FDA will break a 50-year stronghold that a handful of players have had on the hearing aid market and on the pocketbooks of the millions of Americans who need relief from hearing loss but have not been able to afford their exorbitant prices.

FDA guidelines for the Over-the-Counter (OTC) Hearing Aid Law were released.

Proponents of the new law including the administrations of Presidents Obama, Trump, and Biden claim the bill will help democratize competition and incentivize a wider range of innovative solutions for the 48 million Americans suffering from mild-to-moderate hearing loss. In addition, the OTC ruling includes guidelines for Personal Sound Amplification Devices (PSAPs), which are non-medical and open to a broad interpretation with far-reaching commercial applications.

Considered to be the third most common physical condition after arthritis and heart disease, untreated hearing loss has been linked to anxiety, depression, social isolation, reduced mobility, falls, dementia, and lower quality of life and relationships. It is also an issue facing more than just the elderly populations. Hearing loss also affects millions of people under the age of 35, as well as kids who go untested and consequently struggle with learning.

The Real Game-Changer

The real game-changer, however, will be at the intersection of wellness, fitness, and consumer audio products. The regulatory shift, when combined with exponential advancements in sound and wellness tech, will help fuel the Hearables Revolution and what is estimated to become a 93 billion dollar Hearables (in-ear audio devices) market by 2026. The long-term impact will be on the Amplified Future: the full integration of audio as a key component of personalized and precision medicine.

Amplified Future

Sound Health: Hearing Aids vs Hearables

Until now, the hearing aid industry has set the medical standards shaping consumer concerns around hearing loss. Hearing aids also represent a growing high-ticket reimbursable market thats worth $1.6B in the US, and slightly more in China.

The Big 5 hearing aid companies, however, only serve 14% of people suffering from hearing loss in the US. They have done little to address the social stigma, help younger and uninsured populations, or keep costs down. That leaves the majority of the population unserved: those dealing with mild to moderate hearing loss who dont require medical-grade hearing aids or implants.

Hearables Projected Market

Both OTC Hearing Aids and Hearables have an opportunity to fill a large part of that market gap while providing products that deliver infinitely more features than traditional hearing aids at a fraction of the cost. Smart-audio and wearable product manufacturers are already lining up to serve that population, expand their brand footprint, and get their slice of the Hearables pie.

Merging Audio and Wellness Expertise

In 1964, engineer and MIT professor Amar Bose founded his audio brand so he could dramatically improve the fidelity and transform the listener experience for recorded music. (He personally loved listening to classical music). Over 50 years later, the company in been making moves into both medical hearing aids and wellness-based consumer Hearables. They have already introduced their first FDA-cleared direct-to-consumer self-fitting hearing aid for less than 1/3 of the price of traditional hearing aids and are continuing development of their in-ear sleep aid technology, SleepBuds.

Bose Earbuds

The new FDA ruling gives Bose an opportunity to create more solid revenue streams for their new healthcare division as they seek to establish themselves as a credible and trusted wellness brand.

According to Steve Romine, VP of Bose Hear, Were thrilled the FDA has announced the issuing of its draft OTC hearing aid regulations. This marks a great moment for the millions of Americans experiencing hearing loss today...For now, theres renewed optimism for hearing loss sufferers who have put their hearing health on the back-burner due to the numerous barriers to getting the help they need to hearing better again.

In another marriage of consumer audio tech and hearing health, Sennheiser sold its consumer product division to Swiss hearing aid company Sonova last year for $240 million. In addition to giving Sennheiser immediate credibility and positioning in healthcare, the move will allow Sonova to bridge into non-medical consumer audio products.

Apples Slow But Steady Advances Into the Future of Health

The most valuable tech company in the world (currently valued at over $2 trillion) Apple is steadily building out its ecosystem and product lines for in-ear audio, fitness, and health. Apple recently announced their conversation boost feature for more precise listening through their AirPods, and the company is exploring other hearing enhancement features that will go beyond the benefits of noise reduction and their latest announcement spatial audio. There is also talk in the air about temperature and posture monitoring with their new AirPods Pro, as well as using iPhones to help diagnose depression and cognitive decline.

Apple has already staked a majority claimed for what will become the most coveted and connected real estate on the human body - the human ear. Last year, AirPods enabled Apple to capture over one-third of the high-end consumer earbud market. Various sources are saying that if Apple spun off their AirPods division into to a separate company, 2020 revenues for the spinoff would have surpassed those of Uber, Adobe, Nvidia, and Spotify.

Apple Airpods is a game changer

Apple continues to add value to their AppleFit programs with health and wellness monitoring features via their primary wearable, the Apple Watch, in sync with iCloud the the iPhone. In 2020, however, AirPods unit sales had more than doubled those of the Watch, giving another clear indicator of the continued migration from wearables to hearables. While I doubt Apple will move fully into the OTC hearing aid market, as suggested by the recent The Wall Street Journal article, the fashionable tech giant is well-positioned in both the consumer marketplace and the human ear to make a big play in the Amplified Future, focusing on the most scalable health, audio, and wellness features.

New Players In The Game

Companies like CES 2020 Honoree & Consumer Technology Association (CTA) Innovation Award winner Nuheara, started developing their Hearable devices - IQbuds - after a successful 2016 Indiegogo campaign and 2017 CES launch.

Nuheara

Earlier this month, Nuheara announced that it has commenced its clinical trial with the National Acoustics Laboratories (NAL), to support its planned expansion into clinically tested and regulatory-approved hearing aids.

Japanese manufacturer Olive Union has been targeting the younger populations and the 86% of the 48 million Americans who suffer from mild to moderate hearing loss and dont require medical-grade hearing aids. In the process of trying to de-stigmatize hearing aids, however, they are coming up with some very stylish hearable offerings, like their Olive Pros and SmartEar Plus that combine hi-end personalized audio features to provide style (they have a similar form to AirPods), hi-fidelity music listening (via the ability to choose between Music Mode and Hearing Mode), noise reduction, and customizable hearing enhancement features via their phone app.

Olive Pro hearing aids

Olive Union closed a $7 million B round in April 2021, bringing their total funding raised to date $20 million for their next-generation smart hearing technology.

Kokoon sleep phones have integrated EEG sensors and other sleep-specific features to capitalize on the burgeoning sleep market. Although they offer a more traditional headphone (over-the-ear) design, their software interface provides more content options than Bose in-ear SleepBuds including streaming third-party music sources via Bluetooth from your mobile device. Because the global epidemic of sleep problems and the consumer demand for better non-pharmaceutical solutions are not going away anytime soon, you can expect a new wave of innovations in hearables for sleep in the near future.

Why Consumer Audio Companies are Racing Into Health & Wellness

Why are investment funds, new ventures, and audio heavyweights jumping headfirst into the health tech pool?

The global market for earbuds and headphones is growing steadily as wireless becomes the norm and new features continue to improve performance and usefulness. A report from Grand View Research, set the value at $25 billion in 2019 (before witnessing the record-breaking 2020 AirPods sales), with a projected compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of over 20% from 2020 to 2027. The total wearables market was worth nearly $70B in 2019, with the hearables sector (including headphones), making up $28B of that.

Amazon, Apple Or Spotify: The Musical Race To Dominate Digital Wellness

Even digital music and content companies are looking at wellness as a way to differentiate, create new revenue streams, and attract customers away from their competitors. The evolution of higher fidelity and feature-rich hearables will only help their cause.

The audio products market, however, is crowded and highly competitive. That means market caps and lower profit margins for traditional and limited-use audio products. For consumer audio product manufacturers to compete and create exponential growth in the future, they may have to cut their slice from a bigger pie.

According to a report from Precedence Research, the broader Digital Health Market was $181 billion in 2020 and is expected to grow to over $550 billion by 2027. It is predicted that the much broader and exponentially larger global healthcare market will reach $10 trillion by 2022. The largest US healthcare company, McKesson MCK , already has an annual revenue of over $208 billion. While these numbers are inclusive of a number of sectors that make up the massive global health and wellness markets, those are some pretty attractive figures for forward-thinking digital audio product manufacturers to consider.

Why Voice Will Lead Biometrics in Hearables

Even without including digital health and personalized medicine, 2020 wellness expenditures ($4.2 trillion, per the Global Wellness Institute) surpassed over half of total global health expenditures ($7.3 trillion, based on WHO data). That wellness industry represents 5.3 percent of global economic output.

When it comes to the ever-increasing number of startups entering the digital health and wellness space, there seems to be no sign of slowing, especially if you measure future growth by current investments. Global VC funding for Q1 of this year marked a record-setting quarter for investments into Digital Health companies, hitting $7.2 billion - twice that invested during the same quarter in 2020.

As of the close of Q3 2021 according to CB Insights State of Healthcare market report digital health startups have raised $39.6B in funding YTD, already 27% more than 2020 funding totals. Q3 also saw the birth of ten new healthcare unicorns, bringing the industrys total to 91 - the 3rd highest ever.

As audio becomes an increasingly more important health and wellness pipeline for data tracking and content delivery, and wearables continue their migration to high-feature multi-purpose hearables, the overlap of these markets will merge to create a bigger pie.

Apple Earpod Customer

Listen Up: Voice Bring More Value to the Future of Hearables

And lets not forget the exploding Voice Economy which has already established household names by the likes of Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant. The possibilities at the intersection of voice analytics and personalized health monitoring continue to expand. Anyone who uses their earbuds to make phone calls or voice commands, can likely envision how the human ear will become the #1 place to seamlessly capture biometric health and wellness data from your voice.

Beyond the FDA and Into the Future

There is no doubt that the FDA guidelines released last week will play an important role. One way to look at the FDA ruling is through the disruptive lens of the hearing aid market, but that only provides a narrow view of a complex matrix of forces that are creating, transforming, and connecting a number of much larger markets.

We are entering the Amplified Futureone that will feature ongoing real-time and multivariable predictive analysis by sensor-rich hearables and wearables. In addition to improving how we hear the world, these devices will monitor our vitals on the go and offer real-time recommendations for enhancing our physical and emotional well-being. These same technologies will provide early detection data to help us avoid life-threatening diseases, all as we go about our daily routines, all captured seamlessly through closed-loop systems between our ears, the cloud, our phones and other smart devices.

The companies that build the best UX and ecosystem to successfully bridge more traditional uses of this 2-way audio highway (voice and music), with highly effective, personalized, and convenient health and wellness features will have the best arsenal to win in the Hearables Revolution. Along with the competition, they will also help democratize and de-stigmatize hearing enhancement solutions for the new majority.

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How FDAs OTC Ruling Will Fuel The Hearables Revolution - Forbes

Getting routine breast exams is something Dag Pavic, M.D., a breast radiologist at MUSC Hollings Cancer Center, stresses all the time. Thats why hes excited that Hollings is participating in a large National Cancer Institute-funded trial, aimed at improving breast cancer screenings and treatment options for women with, and without, health insurance.

Breast screening is our best weapon in the fight against breast cancer, Pavic said. When breast cancer is caught early, the patient has numerous treatment options and usually a very good outcome.

The trial, called the Tomosynthesis Mammographic Imaging Screening Trial (TMIST), will provide insights into which type of screening is best and how to improve future breast cancer patient care. Nationwide, researchers hope to enroll 165,000 women in the trial.

This trial helps us offer more personalized medicine to each individual patient, Pavic said. We have to consider a patients risk of breast cancer and breast characteristics that may alter what may be the best type of screening for that person.

The trial is being supported by the NCI Community Oncology Research Program (NCORP). Nearly 50 million screening mammograms occur each year in the United States, yet it has been decades since a large-scale randomized trial of mammography has been done, said Worta McCaskill-Stevens, M.D., director of NCORP. The evolution of mammography technology provides us with an opportunity to fill in the gaps in our knowledge about two available breast cancer screening tests.

Hollings is currently enrolling women ages 45 to 74 in TMIST. As part of the randomized study, women will receive a mammogram using conventional two-dimensional mammography or the newer tomosynthesis three-dimensional mammography.

Through this trial, we hope to learn whether or not there are differences between 2D and 3D mammography in detecting cancers and advanced cancers and whether one type of mammography results in more false positives and callbacks for further evaluation, Pavic said.

Pavic, who serves as the primary investigator of the TMIST trial at Hollings, said researchers will also collect genetic samples from enrolled patients. These samples allow us to understand and study cancer on a molecular level, which will ultimately lead to better therapies. Once you understand the molecular aspects of breast cancer, you can investigate, produce and use medicine that will target those components.

Pavic said he hopes that the trial also answers two other questions: Is standard-of-care 3D mammography better than standard-of-care 2D mammography? And how frequently should patients be screened for breast cancer?

The trial is being offered at two MUSC locations Hollings Cancer Center in downtown Charleston and MUSC Womens Health at East Cooper Medical Pavilion. To date, 90 women who have enrolled in the trial at MUSC locations, and Pavic said that, eventually, he hopes to have several hundred enroll before trial enrollment ends in 2024.

Patients should be excited to participate in this trial because they can be part of something for the greater good, he said. We have an opportunity to gain a better understanding of breast cancer screenings and treatments. That will ultimately help to save lives in the years to come.

Patients interested in enrolling in TMIST should contact study coordinator, Kristin Thompson, at thompskn@musc.edu or 843-792-6463.

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Hollings participating in large national breast cancer study aimed at improving screenings and treatment - Medical University of South Carolina

Johnson & Johnson and partner Legend Biotech are expecting an FDA decision for their first CAR-T product, cilta-cel, in November. To prepare for the upcoming launch of the personalized cell therapy, the Big Pharma company is planning a specialized patient support program, a dedicated sales team and more.

J&J intends to roll out a customized programto help cilta-cel-prescribed multiple myeloma patients navigate the treatment journey, Serge Messerlian, Janssens U.S. oncology president, said in a recent interview.

CAR-T therapies modify a patients own T cells to make them better weapons against cancer bearing a specific biomarker. For such a personalized medicine, one needs to be very thoughtful not just [about] the product, but theres a very important service component to that, Messerlian said.

RELATED:J&J, Legend Biotech's multiple myeloma CAR-T scores FDA priority review, setting up a clash with BMS' Abecma

Because of the complexity in production, CAR-T products can be pricey. Before cilta-cel, Bristol Myers Squibbrecently introduced a rival BCMA-targeted cell therapy, Abecma, at a list price of $419,500. Patients need to travel to designated treatment centers to have theirT cells drawn and later to receive the final product. They must also monitor for a potentially life-threatening side effect known as cytokine release syndrome after treatment.

For J&J'sprogram, each patient will get one-on-one assistancenavigating access challenges and help with the logistics associated withtreatment, Messerlian said. For the upcoming launch, J&J isworking on CAR-T site initiations and making sure the market is ready to receive the medicine. Although the company already has a popular multiple myeloma therapy, Darzalex, cilta-cel will have a separate sales team, he said.

J&J has a separate personalized patient assistance program for Darzalex, called Janssen Compass, which also covers prostate cancer med Erleada. The company is now rolling out Janssen Compass on a national scope after a limited run, Messerlian said.

Compass is a very patient-centric, patient-oriented platform; it almost serves like a shepherd, Messerlian explained. In Janssen Compass, a single point of contacta nurseis assigned to help bring the right resources to a patient to manage obstacles along the way, including access challenges and side effects.

RELATED:J&J cell therapy partner Legend carves out production foothold in Belgium as myeloma drug nears finish line

About half of the patients that get on any drug drop off within six months, Messerlian noted, and not all of them are related to costs.

Sometimes, patients dont understand what to expect on the treatment journey or fully acknowledge the benefits ofthe medicine, so they may not be committed to the therapy, Messerlian said. In Janssen Compass, a care navigator will help set expectations, educate each patient on how to manage potential obstacles and support them in developing a care plan to communicate with doctors.

In return, J&J is getting valuable insights. Janssen Compass allows the company to understand and analyze which patients will be most likely to drop off, and what are some interventions we can [use to] predict and prevent these types of patient drop-offs, Messerlian said.

Beyond patient support, J&J is also teaming up with healthcare facilities and specialty networks to help train doctors, especially in the community setting. The goal of such education is, as Messerlian put it, about bending the quality-of-life curve.

RELATED:Pharmas' return on $5B spent yearly on patient support programs? Only 3% are using them: survey

Working with its care partners, J&J is collecting and analyzing data to map out how various patients move through the treatment process, aiming to improve outcomes along the way.

It comes down to understanding, what are the inputs of this care process, what are the decisions along the process, and can you standardize to that, Messerlian said. [With] a standard set, you can then roll that out in partnership with other practices to ultimately elevate the standard of care.

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Johnson & Johnson preps for first CAR-T launch with a new patient support program, a dedicated sales team and more - FiercePharma